The
Trials of Haiti
Today,
the United States is passing almost all of its direct aid
to Haiti through USAID, which then funnels the money to
various NGOs. But according to Gerard Johnson, until recently
the IDB's representative there, this tactic is only a palliative,
not a cure. "In the sense of development, NGOs cannot
replace the government. They can satisfy short-term humanitarian
problems, they're very important as a partner to government,
but I don't think you can avoid the government and do lasting
development." The only real solution in the long run,
Johnson felt, was to strengthen the institutions within
Haiti, and one way to do that was through IDB loans. Haiti,
he explained, has an informal economy, untaxed and untaxable,
that probably accounts for about 85 percent of the country's
employment. Incompetence and corruption are problems, but
the bigger problem is that the government can't raise enough
in taxes to do much more than pay its employees' salaries.
Low-interest IDB loans could provide the capital for making
real improvements.
There
are a few examples of successes even in Haiti. One of Johnson's
favorites was a recent Canadian project that had brought
reliable electricity to the city of Jacmel. One of the most
harmful legacies of the American occupation early in the
twentieth century and of the Duvaliers' long rule has been
the centralization of everything. The Jacmel project was
so far fairly successful, Johnson thought, because the Aristide
government had ceded control, including over revenues, to
the local government. "This is exactly the model that
we would like to replicate with the water loan," Johnson
told me. "Support good governance, support local government,
and that's definitely linked to democracy. The people are
to stand in relation to the state to the point where they're
willing to trust enough to pay their water rates, which
sounds like something automatic in Washington, DC, but in
Haiti when you pay your water rate, you may or may not get
water."
Of
course, some opponents of neoliberal economic reform believe
that poor countries should have no truck with the Iffies,
because the conditions that are invariably attached to their
aid usually end up doing further harm to the poor. I raised
this objection with Dr. Paul Farmer. He is a professor of
medicine and medical anthropology at Harvard and the medical
director of a remarkably effective and expanding public
health system in a desperately impoverished region of rural
Haiti. He has also published a number of articles critical
of the Iffies and neoliberal economic reforms. He told me,
"Anti-neoliberal people say Haiti would be better off
without the IMF and the World Bank and the IDB, but there's
no topsoil left in a lot of the country, there are no jobs,
people are dying of AIDS and coughing their lungs out with
TB, and the poor don't have enough to eat. These are problems
in the here and now. Something has to be done. Haiti is
flat broke, and I don't see what else the government can
do but turn to the Iffies. It's the job of the true friends
of Haiti to protect it from the hypocrisies of the Iffies."
I
have spent portions of the past three years in Haiti, mostly
in the country's famished, deforested central plateau. During
that time I've met a number of people who describe themselves
as peasants, among them a man in his 30s, named Ti Jean
Gabriel. When I spoke with him last winter in Haiti, he
said he wished he could talk with President Bush and tell
him about the problems in the country. He could tell his
own story, how when he was 8 he had so few clothes that
he used to work naked in his father's field. "I feel
like if I could get to the right person, so I could explain
the situation..."
I
told him that some people thought giving more aid to Haiti
now would be a mistake. What was his response to that?
He
leaned toward me. "I will answer your question with
a question," he said. "You have seen Haiti. Do
you think Haiti needs more aid?"
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